"Ms. Brooks, I'm sorry to bother you," Maya began. Imani interrupted gently. "You haven't bothered me. You gave me water when the people around you seemed determined to make that difficult. What happened after I left?"
Maya told her everything. She described the record she had entered, the instruction to remove it, the accusation of disloyalty, and the order to hand over her badge. She kept her voice as steady as possible, although it changed when she mentioned the loss of insurance. Imani listened without telling her how she should feel.
"I'd like to hear this in person," Imani said. "There's a quiet meeting room available at my office. Julian can send you the address, and you can bring someone with you if you'd prefer. You don't have to agree to anything today."
Maya hesitated. The offer sounded formal enough to make her wary, and she did not want to become part of a public fight with Sterling Vane. "I'm not calling for money," she said. "I just wanted somebody to know I wasn't trying to cause trouble."
"I understand," Imani replied. "Come because I want to listen, not because you need to prove that. Whatever happens afterward, you'll be given the facts before anybody asks you to make a decision." Maya agreed to meet that afternoon.
The Brooks Meridian office was smaller than she expected. It occupied part of a renovated warehouse building with exposed brick, broad windows, and a receptionist who stood to greet her before asking what she needed. Maya arrived wearing the same navy blouse she had worn to Sterling Vane the day before. For a moment, the simple kindness of being expected made her more emotional than Preston's dismissal had.
Julian met her at the entrance and introduced himself without explaining the position he held. He brought her into a conference room where Imani was already waiting with two glasses of water and a legal pad. Maya looked at the water, then at Imani, and a laugh escaped before she could stop it. "I suppose I should have brought you one," she said.
"Today it's my turn," Imani answered. She asked Maya to sit, then waited while the young woman found a comfortable way to begin. There was no camera, no audience, and no assistant recording every word for public use. The privacy mattered; Maya had already been made into a spectacle once and did not intend to repeat the experience voluntarily.
She started with the firing, then circled backward through the previous months. Guests without executive connections were made to wait longer, maintenance workers were told to avoid the main entrance, and visiting applicants sometimes received different treatment depending on which department requested their interview. A woman arriving for an accounting role in a wheelchair had once waited twenty minutes while Kelsey and Sienna argued about whether it would look better to move her into a service corridor. Maya had found an accessible meeting space and then spent the afternoon being told she was too sensitive about logistics.
"I tried not to make problems," Maya admitted. "I thought if I stayed polite, did the work, and kept the records straight, eventually the people above me would notice that the process was wrong." She glanced at her folded hands. "Yesterday I realized some of them had noticed. They just liked it that way."